It seems obvious when you type it out: Lidl-Trek have an internal rule that riders and staff can’t step foot in a rival supermarket while wearing team issue kit or clothing.
Makes sense, right? Lidl are spending all these millions to have Mads Pedersen, Elisa Longo Borghini and the gang cross finish lines first displaying Lidl’s logo front and centre, so why would they want them proudly sporting their logos while trundling round the aisles of an Intermarché or, God forbid, an Aldi?
This sort of rule is already an accepted and universal practice in terms of sporting equipment: riders only ride the bikes they are paid to ride. The extension to non-cycling specific sponsors is a step further, however.
In the case of Lidl, it’s also probably necessary when there’s a higher likelihood of you getting papped by a member of the public running out of a Carrefour to grab a banana mid-training ride compared to the likes of, for example Kasper Asgreen getting caught fixing a crack in the wall of his house using Polycell Polyfilla instead of Soudal, or Jasper Philipsen washing his barnet with anything other than Alpecin caffeine shampoo (because he wants to keep his hair).
“Lidl are an incredibly supportive title sponsor, so it makes sense that we return that support in the battle for supermarket supremacy,” came the finely tuned reply from a team representative when they confirmed this rule was in place within the team.
“Even if a Lidl store isn’t the closest option, we’re happy to go the extra distance to ensure we can supply our riders with the highest-quality healthy produce.”
Luckily, there are over 12,000 Lidls across Europe, so there’s unlikely to ever be one that far away.
But how widespread are these types of rules across WorldTour teams?
It is unreasonable to expect Arkéa-B&B Hotels to always be able to sleep in a B&B Hotel while at the races, obviously, and we’re sure the Saudi paymasters don’t give a damn whether any Jayco-AlUla riders visit other UNESCO World Heritage sites during the off-season. Similarly, professional teams sponsored by gas stations (TotalEnergies and Uno-X) are human, just like us, who can’t always predict which brand of decayed dinosaur carcass will be available at the motorway service station they pull off at when they need to fill the tank.
Okay, what about Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale? The sporting retailer with over 2,000 stores in 69 countries and so is another very public-facing sponsor. The answer from the team is no, the only rule is the standard one of wearing sponsor-correct clothing during training and races.
And Bora-Hansgrohe? Are riders required to have all of the taps, showerheads and extractor fans in their houses to be either Boras or Hansgrohes?
Communications were sent around the team’s marketing and sponsorship department to find an answer as we partly ruined their Wednesday morning with our nonsense.
“There is no formal ‘obligation’ but of course the team and sponsors have a certain expectation (and do a lot for it) that riders are supportive brand ambassadors who can relate with these products and are happy using them,” Bora-Hansgrohe told us. Time to break into Jai Hindley’s house in the dead of night and shine a torch into his sink and see what we come up with (for legal reasons, this is definitely a joke). Definitely going to ask Aleksandr Vlasov at the Tour this summer exactly how he relates to the taps attached to his bathroom sink.
Finally, and more obviously, we realised that despite Dutch supermarket brand Jumbo departing from Visma-Lease a Bike’s name at the end of last year, there is another supermarket sponsor in the peloton, over at Intermarché-Wanty. What say you, Intermarché-Wanty?
“Good question,” came the initial response when we explained to them how Lidl-Trek were running things, and if they operated in a similar way.
The team wasn’t willing to disclose what was and wasn’t contained within their rider contracts – fair enough. But we did manage to find out that contracts pre-dating Intermarché coming on board in 2021 as the team stepped up to WorldTour level had not been updated to include any sort of rival supermarket clause. We would therefore hazard a guess that the Intermarché-Wanty riders do not have a stipulation preventing them from entering another supermarket in team clothes or kit – aside from that old failsafe called common sense.
Really, having to occasionally go slightly out of your way to visit a sponsor-correct supermarket is a small price to pay when faced with the alternative of literally pedalling to further the marketing ambitions of: a petrochemicals giant, a sovereign wealth fund (take your pick by the way), and, err … how do I say this one without upsetting either side, I guess I’ll just write their actual name: Israel-Premier Tech. Or, saving maybe the best until last, a petroleum company that helped fund the Russian war machine!
It’s all just bike racing at the end of the day. The riders are just trying to make their way one kilometre at a time. But please, can someone get Mads Pedersen a sponsor-correct banana; he’s getting hungry.
Did we do a good job with this story?